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"Has it been a week?" I didn’t have to feign confusion As far as my memory was concerned, it had only been about two days since I last saw hi, replaced by nothingness "How long was I unconscious?"

"All healthy individuals recovered from Contra Costa County were kept sedated for a five-day period," said one of the scientists, apparently relieved to have so that she could contribute to the conversation "It allowed us to be sure you were as clean as you appeared to be"

"The io te a warning look at the scientist She flushed red, looking away He returned his attention toprotein markers tomorrow Several of us have required enuinely sure of being uncontaminated"

Antiparasitics that couldn’t cross the blood-brain barrier wouldn’t touch a sleepwalker, or a chimera Antiparasitics that could cross the barrier would either be metabolized or cause anaphylactic shock, severe illness, and potentially, if the drugs weren’t discontinued quickly enough, death It wasn’t a fun way to go, at least if o by "Congratulations," I said "It must be nice to not be scared anymore"

Colonel Mitchell winced for sohter’s face, arms still folded He looked away

"Where a facility," he said, without looking at me "You’re safe here"

"That wasn’t the question" Several of the scientists were starting to look unhappy about the way that I was talking to their boss I didn’t really care all that much about how they felt I kept hts he’d spent in hts that were more fatherly than scientific He’d taken me out for ice crea cones on Fisherhed at the tourists Those moments had never been common, but they’d been, and it was hard not to dwell on that as I watched him stand there in his uniform, with me in a scientific prison

"I know you’re confused, and I know you’re upset, but this is protocol right now," he said finally, looking back tothe early stages of the outbreak Right noe can afford to space you out and give you a little roo to be the case"

"What? You’re going to start a zoo for unturned huesture in both directions at once, indicating the rows of bubbles stretching out in both directions I wasn’t lying, quite: I still hadn’t claimed to be one of those precious unturned souls "You can’t keep us in here forever It’s inhu"

"A surprising number of laws can be suspended when it’s a ravely, his eyes searching er believed existed "This is a quarantine situation Individuals without any sign of a SymboGen implant are relatively rare, thanks to the corporation’s increasing market saturation over the past few years We need to isolate people long enough to be sure that they’re genuinely clean, and not Trojan horses looking to get into our protected populations Once someone is fully cleared, they will be released into a less restrained setting We’ve acquired a small town in Contra Costa County, relatively isolated by both geography and design The inhabitants have either been restrained here or relocated elsewhere I’m sure you’ll all find it quite comfortable there"

I stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words Solances, like they weren’t coto put us in a zoo?"

"An isolated environment where you can be protected from the current threat," he corrected "There’s no way of telling whether the SymboGen implant has become transmissible, and we need to protect the few individuals who have been confir me a party line--maybe a little bit more of the line than he was supposed to feed me, but that could all be excused by the fact that I wore his daughter’s face I droppedto look vulnerable, and asked, "How’s Joyce?"

His face shut down There was no other way of describing what happened It wasn’t the muscular death of the sleepwalkers, or even the sudden loss of muscle tension that came when someone fell asleep or was knocked unconscious: this was a si out, until there was nothing left in his expression that could tell me how he felt "She survived the course of intraave her on Dr Kim’s recommendation There were so That’s an the treatment"

The intraet the Sy her brain Nathan and I had known substantially less about the sleepwalkers when Joyce got sick She hadn’t gone all the way into the "walking around, trying to kill people" stage, but she’d lost consciousness and been bad enough that USAMRIID had quarantined her Dad--Colonel Mitchell, I reminded myself; he’d been Dad at the time, but that time had passed--had demanded that we help We’d done our best, and it sounded like we’d saved her body